Global Mobility Services

Managing your international employee assignments and Short Term Business Visitors can carry significant financial risks for your business.

Whether you are sending an employee overseas for the first time, or you are a globally mobile team, our international assignment experts can provide end-to-end support for both your business and your assignees, giving you confidence in your compliance across borders.

Our international network has over 1,700 offices in more than 160 countries to support your goals. We can help you structure your assignments efficiently, and our specialist tools can proactively manage and monitor your global assignee population. Our holistic approach helps both your business and your employees comply with any tax obligations from anywhere in the world.

Our Global Assignment Management System is a user-friendly platform that allows you and your assignees to access, monitor and communicate all relevant data.

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Explore our Global Mobility Services

Immigration

Our UK immigration services cover a wide range of needs, from securing visas for new hires to ensuring compliance with Home Office regulations. We can assist with UK visa and sponsor licence applications, right to work checks and compliance audits.

We also offer comprehensive global immigration support. This includes visa and work permit applications, global immigration compliance and risk management, relocation support services to help your employees settle into their new location and training to your HR team so they are equipped to handle global immigration matters.

We work under the regulation of The Immigration Advice Authority. It is illegal for an unregulated individual/adviser to provide UK immigration advice or services so please come and speak to us.

Strategic reward advisory

Our Strategic Reward Advisory team can assess and enhance your reward model. We can design an effective reward strategy that supports the long-term success of your business or organisation. Our approach to reward drives the right behaviours and outcomes.

Employment law assistance outside the UK

We can help you navigate the legal complexities of having a global workforce with our expert guidance. We can assist with handling dismissals and workforce restructuring, managing employment disputes and controversies, staying compliant and managing legal risks for a flexible and globally mobile workforce. If you need help speak to your usual BDO contact or Caroline Macdonald, co-ordinator Global Legal Services.

Pre-assignment planning

Ahead of any potential assignment, our team can help you design, develop, and refine your global mobility policy. Get expert advice on your tax policy and assignment structuring to make sure you have a tax position that makes the most of expatriate tax concessions. Our cost projection service enables you to plan for and minimise the costs of your global mobility programme. We can also manage your withholding tax and social security liabilities to ensure your compliance across jurisdictions.

Global employee support

Working in another country can be both exciting and daunting for an employee, so meeting their new local personal tax obligations is unlikely to be top of their agenda. We provide orientation briefings to assignees to help them understand their tax obligations. We can also provide a registration and tax return preparation service for your employees to make meeting tax filing obligations as straightforward as possible.

Reconciliation calculations and special arrangements

We provide a comprehensive tax reconciliation service, ensuring all of your relevant tax liabilities or refunds are managed, and funds returned to or paid by the appropriate party.

Not all of your global assignments will be straightforward, so we offer a Customised Payroll Solutions service that support you by:

• Setting up your payroll in new locations
• Preparing shadow or split payrolls
• Managing your international payroll
• Analysing the taxability of wages and benefits by jurisdiction

Short Term Business Visitor Services

Having a global or growing business often means having international business travellers. These aren’t employees who are changing residency or moving home, but are travelling for a specific project or task. These business visitors have been joined by a growing number of employees who ‘commute’ across international borders. This can create extra reporting headaches for your business, because you might be required to report your business visitors and travellers to local tax authorities under base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) legislation.

Tracking your business travellers and handling any related compliance issues can become very complicated - but failing to do so risks unexpected costs for your business. It is essential to track your business visitors because:

• You will need to cover BEPS legislation and Country by Country reporting requirements to align transfer pricing practices with value creation
• Revenue authorities will penalise your business travellers for non-compliance
• Business Visitor reporting is required in certain countries.
  
  

Business Visitor reporting

The UK has led the way in requiring businesses to have arrangements in place to manage their business visitors.

Your business will need to have a STBV Agreement in place for your business visitors if they intend to take advantage of treaty reliefs. There is an annual reporting requirement as well as an annual PAYE scheme for individuals falling outside the eligibility rules for these arrangements.

Other countries are now following the UK’s lead, and both Canada and Ireland now have reporting requirements in place in relation to business travellers.

BDO QuickTrip

BDO QuickTrip is a mobile-ready online platform to help your HR and finance teams manage all the tax and immigration challenges for your international business travellers. It is supported by our expatriate tax specialists in over 160 countries.

• Keep track of your business travellers through interactive dashboards and to produce bespoke reports at the click of a button.
• Using existing data sources (i.e. travel management, expense, or timesheet data) or manually through a 30 second employee questionnaire. Efficiently manage any compliance obligations that could arise for both the traveller and your business.
• Designed to take the stress out of managing international tax affairs and reduce HR complexity, BDO QuickTrip puts you in control and provides you with experts in over 160 countries.